


Kindling

by newmoonmayhem



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Sexual Tension, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 12:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15389238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newmoonmayhem/pseuds/newmoonmayhem
Summary: Johnny's gay. Dally was his first crush, all though he'll never know that.





	Kindling

Dallas Winston was just a year older than Johnny, but he seemed like a millennia wiser. Not about emotional things, about matters of the heart and of friendship and affection, but about the way the world worked. Johnny knew cruelty, he experienced it first hand from his parents, but Dallas knew about jail and about the cruelty of the world. He was worldly, and perhaps that was what first made Johnny take to him. 

Ponyboy and all the others, of course, always assumed that it was mouse like, platonic or perhaps brotherly admiration that Johnny held for Dallas. They never would have suspected exactly the nature of Johnny's feelings, the way that he felt when Dallas leaned up against a car and took a long drag on a cigarette, or how he'd feel when he saw the blond shooting flirtatious looks at the ladies across the drive in. He'd never admit, when the boys talked about the hot ladies on the movie screens that had given them their sexual awakening, that he got his from Dallas and old magazines with photos of James Dean.

Johnny knew if his parents found out, his home life would be even more hellish, but thought that perhaps the gang would accept him. He'd never, after all, heard Ponyboy or Sodapop or even Two-Bit who spoke before he thought say a negative word about a man who liked other men, all though Johnny had to consider perhaps that was because they hadn't known any. But how would Dally feel about it? Would he stop being Johnny's friend, finding his crush weird and perverse?

He didn't want to risk that, so he didn't tell anyone. He never told Ponyboy or Darry or Stevie or especially Dallas, and he never told his mom or his dad or anyone else who might scream and hit and throw at him for it.

But he also didn't expect to die so young.

Johnny had certainly toyed with the idea of moving to one of the big cities, like San Francisco or New York, to where he heard gay men had their own little subcultures like the greasers has in Tulsa. But it also stung, the idea of just up and leaving the gang without a word, without a phone number or trace. 

He never ended up having to make the choice, though.

He wished in those moments that perhaps he'd been a bit more open, that he'd told someone. So he did, during one of Ponyboy's visits, when it was just the two of them, and swore Ponyboy to never tell. 

"I don't know what Dally would think about it all."

And he died. 

And Dallas died, without ever knowing how Johnny felt about him.

And Ponyboy, respectful of his friend, caring for him till the end and beyond, never made a mention of it. 


End file.
